The Town That Television Forgot

By Richard Zoglin

Arietta, New York, is the sort of town satellite-TV companies dream about. Located 70 miles northwest of Albany, in the midst of the Adirondack Mountains, the tiny community (pop. 301) has no traffic lights and no full- time doctor. Many telephones are still on party lines, and the nearest , supermarket is 50 miles away. Television too has largely bypassed the town. Arietta is too remote and unprofitable to be wired for cable, and a good antenna brings in only two or, at most, three stations. Between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. during the summer, because of solar interference, even those stations disappear.

In the past month, however, Arietta has plunged fast and deep into the multichannel universe. Primestar, a home-satellite company, picked Arietta as a demonstration site for its 77-channel DBS service. The company offered residents free installation of a 36-in. receiving dish and two months of free service. Ninety of the town's 133 families signed up, and in one weekend Arietta went from snowy images of Murder, She Wrote to a crystal-clear cornucopia of everything from cnn and the Cartoon Network to round-the-clock movies.

How have the townspeople reacted to the TV bombardment? Mostly they are dazzled. "We used to only watch television a couple of hours a day," says Dawn Marcellus, 29, a housewife and mother of two. "Now the TV is never off unless we're out of the house." "We kind of jumped on it," says Ada Fancher, 47, whose husband owns a land-excavating service. "People have done everything up here to get good reception. They bought antennas, channel boosters, and you could still get only two channels. Now at least we know about current events."

Kids, not surprisingly, have been among the most enthusiastic. "I like the music channels, the Disney Channel, HBO and Cinemax," says 11-year-old Brynn Dziewiatowski. "I watch twice as much TV as I did before." Isabelle Moren, 74, who is homebound because of emphysema, is just as big a fan, particularly of the Discovery Channel: "I like all that scenery, and it's educational." Town councilman Ed Hotaling, 42, who runs a florist shop, thinks the new TV offerings are "just great. At least it's something to see from the outside world. I used to go to bed around 9 o'clock. The other night I went to bed at 12 after watching television."

Psychologists warn that the sudden media immersion could cause serious disruptions for the townspeople, from reducing family time together to shortening attention spans. Robert Kubey, a psychologist and associate professor of communication at Rutgers University, says people who aren't used to so many TV choices could have a tougher time controlling their viewing. "TV is an incredibly seductive element," he says. "I defy someone to show me a place it was introduced and failed." ,

It has failed in the view of at least a few residents. Donald Courtney, 67, a retired forest ranger, is one local who refused Primestar. "I can fall asleep in front of one channel as well as I can with a dozen," he says. Nevertheless, TV has made its mark on Arietta. Video rentals at Farber's General Store have dropped. Twelve-year-old Dean Hotaling isn't playing as much basketball as he used to. ("I watch about three hours a day now. I used to watch one hour.") And the barrage of TV news has quickly turned local viewers into members of the blase class. Says Henry Rogers, 53, the town's supervisor: "We're getting sick of the O.J. business, just like everybody else."

With reporting by Stacy Perman/Arietta